“Is it still possible today for art to exist outside of the rules and demands of the market?” It seems strange to read this question as the opening line of a commercial gallery’s press release, and stranger still to discover “communism” as one of the stated objectives of an artist working within the existing art system. And yet this was the case with Jan De Cock’s “Everything for You, Torino.” Apparently De Cock is working to critique the market from within. His own word for his practice is sculpturecommunism. To this end, he uses his studio as a design and exhibition space for his own work. And he has installed a series of works in public spaces, without requesting permission, usually at night. His intention is to update the function of the monument, understood as a work that can be enjoyed by a broad public, outside the places set aside for art.

The Milan show contained many tall and soaring models that almost obstructed one’s passage through the room; they were all constructed out of variously shaped volumes in diverse materials (wood, plaster, marble). They recalled the sculpture of Constantin Brancusi, but without that master’s hieratic elegance. Furthermore, they were covered with aggressive pictorial interventions in acrylic. Each work was surmounted by an identical object, a double bluish geometric solid that “stands for” an actual monument—an abstract form that avoids any risk of mere descriptiveness or rhetoric.

Each of these monuments was conceived for a different city, and some of them had already been installed in public spaces in Brussels, Frankfurt, Mexico City, and Tokyo. Documentation of these and other similar works, in the form of stereoscopic images, entirely covered the walls of the main exhibition space. They were all captioned nearly identically, with only place and date changed, for example: AN ABSTRACT CAPITALIST SOUVENIR FROM TORINO, ITALY, IN MEMORY OF A SCULPTURE COMMUNISTIC EVENT IN THE MONTH OF FEBRUARY, YEAR TWO THOUSAND AND SEVENTEEN. These “souvenirs” were the only works for sale in the show, at a modest price and openly available to the broader public, not only to wealthy collectors, with the proceeds going toward the creation of new monuments.

As the title of the show implies, De Cock’s most recent intervention was in Turin, which he considers a place that has not yet completely succumbed to cultural consumption. He installed several sculptures in the city, all of which were dedicated to Giorgio de Chirico, whose metaphysical paintings in some cases depict the piazzas of Turin. From his new base in the city, De Cock is also setting up a foundation with an atelier, a school, and exhibition spaces. The show concluded in a second room that contained a single untitled work on the wall: a colored surface with an opening cut out of it—a sort of window onto what the artist’s commitment will make available to everyone.

—Giorgio Verzotti

Translated from Italian by Marguerite Shore.